A decade or so ago, “Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner was hanging out at home with his wife when he realized that most of his best friends had drifted out of his life. How, he wondered, had something like this happened without him noticing?

“I reached this point where I was happily married with kids but I sort of looked around and thought, ‘where did everybody go?’ At one time, these friendships were so important to me,” says Weiner, 49, who’s married to architect Linda Brettler with whom he has four sons.

“And, yes, my wife had become my best friend but I wondered, ‘what is that all about?’ ”

Almost immediately, Weiner, then a writer and producer on “The Sopranos,” began pouring his feelings about friendship into a screenplay.

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The result is “Are You Here,” Weiner’s first feature film since “Mad Men” hit big back in 2007. Written and directed by Weiner, the movie, which is now available on VOD, stars Owen Wilson as Steve Dallas, a womanizing weatherman who, thanks to pot and booze, does anything he can to keep from engaging with life.

His long-time buddy Ben Baker (Zach Galifianakis) is, in many ways, his polar opposite. In contrast to Steve, Ben feels too much. If that sounds like a set-up for a conventional bromance, think again. Weiner is interested in digging deeper into what motivates these guys to keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

“I’m not that great with genre,” says Weiner. “I don’t even know what genre ‘Mad Men’ is. The movie is obviously very different from ‘Mad Men’ but I wanted to explore this idea that Owen and Zach’s characters think they’re in a buddy movie … And then, as it goes along, it becomes more about them facing real life problems.

“That change in tone was a way of saying, ‘hey, let’s look at these guys seriously.’ They’re both in their early ’40s. Are they keeping each other from getting on with their lives? Owen’s character turns out to have a drug problem and Zach’s character turns out to be mentally ill. That’s what keeps them together.”

After Ben’s father dies, the pair travel together to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for the funeral and discover that Ben will inherit millions of dollars. As the friends deal with Ben’s straight-arrow sister (Amy Poehler) and 25-year-old stepmother (Laura Ramsey), they realize they have to make some big changes to survive.

Wilson, Galifianakis and Poehler are all known, primarily, as comedians. But in “Are You Here,” the three actors demonstrate just how good they are at playing drama.

“Most great comedians can act and when they do, they really get you in the chest,” says Weiner. “I knew these three were good actors. You can’t be as funny as they are, and not have something else going on.

“And I think that’s why they wanted to do the movie because they knew it would allow them to do things they hadn’t done before.”

One of the best things about “Are You Here” is that all of the characters, even Poehler’s buzzkill of an overachiever, are treated fairly by Weiner. They all have their reasons.

“Amy and I talked beforehand, and she could have played it broader and it probably would have been funnier,” notes Weiner. “But in the movie, she’s playing a real human being. She has to be the adult. She’s been cleaning up Zach’s mistakes for years. She has a more … realistic view of [mental illness.]”

For a film about friendship, it makes sense that Weiner would involve a handful of his “Mad Men” pals in the production. Lending their talents to the movie are a number of veterans of the show, including exec producer Scott Hornbacher, production designer Dan Bishop, cinematographer Chris Manley, editor Chris Gay and composer David Carbonara.

“There’s a lot of trust involved,” says Weiner. “You are stepping into a machine that takes a lot less time to get off the ground. Everyone is of the same mind. After working together for five years on the show, I could trust them to turn their attention to a very different kind of story.

“And they’re the best people working. I would have been, ‘get me the production designer from ‘ Men!’ anyway.”

While friendship is the central a theme of “Are You Here,” Weiner also examines the disconnect the characters feel from nature.

Weiner says he began to think about how separated he felt from the real world after casually tossing away a chicken leg he’d been eating. His then six-year-old son was aghast. “That was a chicken’s whole leg,” the youngster said.

“I read a book that said our distance from how sausage is made – and where it comes from – allows us to be cruel,” notes Weiner. “For me, telling a story that involves [a character] killing the thing that he’s going to eat for dinner is transformative.

“I’m not a vegetarian or anti-technology – I love my phone – but I feel that we have all kinds of methods at our disposal that keep us from being in a state where we might be happier. The movie is called ‘Are You Here’ because it is about, in some way, the importance of being in the moment. “

A native of Baltimore who primarily grew up in Los Angeles, Weiner began his screenwriting career penning scripts for “Party Girl,” a short-lived Fox sitcom starring Christine Taylor. After the series was cancelled, Weiner rebounded nicely by going to work as writer and producer on two underrated sitcoms: “The Naked Truth” with Tea Leoni and “Andy Richter Controls The Universe.”

Weiner wrote the pilot for “Mad Men” back in 1999 and sent a copy to David Chase, the creator and showrunner of “The Sopranos.” Chase was so bowled over by what he read that he gave Weiner a job as producer and writer on the acclaimed series about mobster Tony Soprano.

Working for Chase was a turning point for Weiner. “I learned to trust my subconscious,” says the filmmaker. “And that was a super valuable lesson. I learned that if something was on my mind, and I could be specific about it, there was a good chance that it would speak to other people too.”

Since “Mad Men” was picked up by AMC back in 2007, the series has become one of the most acclaimed shows on TV. It won Emmys for the Outstanding Drama Series four times consecutively beginning with its first season.

At the moment, Weiner is over-seeing post-production on the concluding episodes, which will begin airing in Spring 2015. All seven of the final episodes have been shot, including the much-anticipated series finale.

“When we were doing the last shot with Jon Hamm, we had all of these people who’d worked on the entire season come over to watch, even though they’d wrapped already,” says Weiner. “We had over 300 people on the stage. It was a celebration of being a part of something we all really valued a lot.

“One of the actors said to me, ‘you had this idea and because of that, we all got to meet each other.’ You don’t think of things like that. But it stuck with me. There was a lot of gratitude and a lot of emotion.

“I wrote this thing 14 years ago so it’s been a third of my life. Kiernan Shipka [who plays Don’s daughter Sally] was six when I met her. The reality of that was really hitting me on the drive home the last day.”

When we last left Don Draper (Hamm), he’d come out on top at work, following a season where he seemed to be on the precipice of losing it all. His marriage to Megan (Jessica Pare) might be over but he’s patched things up with workmate Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and daughter Sally.

“I think we showed Don working his way back up in his own company,” says Weiner. “We showed him trying to express virtue instead of impulsiveness. But, for what happens next, you’ll have to watch. And hopefully people will enjoy it. “

About the Author

Amy Longsdorf is a freelance writer who got hooked on movies after catching "The Godfather" on the big screen. She is a weekly contributor to The Mercury's Sunday Living Section writing entertainment features and DVD reviews. She graduated from Cedar Crest College in Allentown with a degree in communications and has written for People Magazine, The New york Daily News, The Toronto Star, Philadelphia Weekly and The Camden Courier Post. She contributed to "Videohound's Groovy Movies:Far Out Films of the Psychedelic Era." Reach the author at movieamy@aol.com
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